Nation, World Briefs: Sotomayor quits all-women’s club

Published 10:09 pm Friday, June 19, 2009

WASHINGTON — Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has resigned from an elite all-women’s club after Republicans questioned her participation in it. Sotomayor said she resigned from the Belizean Grove on Friday. In a letter to Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the federal appeals court judge says she is convinced the club does not practice “invidious discrimination” and that her membership in it did not violate judicial ethics. But she says she didn’t want questions about it to “distract anyone from my qualifications and record.”

Massachusetts: Gay passports

Gay couples traveling overseas can now show passports that feature their married names, letting them take advantage of a little-noticed revision to State Department regulations that critics had feared would undermine the federal Defense of Marriage Act. The name-change revision took effect May 27 in an addition to the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual. It allows same-sex couples to obtain passports under the names recognized by their state through their marriages or civil unions.

Illinois: Rain delays flights

Storms that moved across the central part of the U.S. caused delays at Chicago airports, with record rainfall at O’Hare International Airport. Flight delays at O’Hare on Friday were 90 minutes or more. More than 100 flights were canceled. At Midway, 45-minute delays and minor cancellations were reported. O’Hare had received 3.54 inches by 1 p.m. The National Weather Service said the previous record for June 19 was 1.79 inches in 1961.

California: Big pot robbery

Robbers in ski masks got away with pot and cash in a stickup at a Los Angeles medical marijuana store. A police spokesman said three gunmen held up the Gourmet Green Room dispensary shortly before 11 p.m. Thursday. The robbers took about $15,000 in cash and an undisclosed amount of marijuana and fled in a silver Cadillac driven by a fourth man. Authorities said customers were in the store at the time but nobody was hurt.

Warning on marijuana smoke

Marijuana smoke has joined tobacco smoke and hundreds of other chemicals on a list of substances California regulators say cause cancer. The ruling Friday by the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment likely will force pot shops with 10 or more employees to post warnings. Final guidelines are expected by the time warning requirements take effect in a year. The listing only applies to marijuana smoke, not the plant itself. A spokesman said the agency found marijuana smoke contains 33 of the same harmful chemicals as tobacco smoke.

Florida: Caylee autopsy

An autopsy for slain toddler Caylee Anthony shows duct tape was placed on the girl’s face before her body began to decompose. The report released Friday in Orlando agrees with authorities’ contention the girl was killed, but still doesn’t say how she died. It did not say whether the duct tape was placed on the child before or after her death. Caylee’s mother, Casey Anthony, has been charged in the girl’s death. Prosecutors said they will seek the death penalty if she is convicted of first-degree murder.

Mexico: Ambulance attacked

Gunmen tossed a grenade at an ambulance and then opened its doors to kill a patient inside who had narrowly survived an earlier shooting in a drug cartel-plagued Mexican state Friday. Paramedics ran for their lives during the attack. Vehicles carrying four masked gunmen cut off the ambulance around 2 a.m. as it carried the 23-year-old man to a hospital in Morelia, the capital on Michoacan state, the state prosecutor’s office said. Assailants tossed a fragmentation grenade at the ambulance, setting it on fire, and the two paramedics ran away, police said.

South Africa: Study of rape

A leading South African research group said one in four male South Africans it surveyed admitted to committing rape — a finding that cast a harsh light on a culture of sexual violence that victims groups say is deeply embedded in society. According to police statistics, some 36,000 women were raped in 2007 — nearly 100 per day. But victim support groups and government-backed research say the vast majority of rapes go unreported because of the stigma involved. The government-funded Medical Research Council, whose findings often influence official policy, said it conducted the survey to deepen understanding of men’s attitudes and behavior.

From Herald news services